Interrogation
by Sekah
Summary: AU: The year is 4012. The Demonic Alliance, formed after the technological ascension of humans, struggles to survive the hostile takeover of Spirit World and destruction of the Makai. Kurama, still alive, is captured by a familiar face: Karasu.
1. Year 4012

**Author's Note:** Originally written for the Yu Yu Hakusho Kink Meme, on livejournal.

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><p>Things had changed in the two thousand years since the birth of Yusuke Urameshi. Raizen's prediction that the human world would overtake the demon was proven correct a mere thousand years past his death. Technology replaced what weak human limbs could not, and now demons were exterminated, nearly, or corralled in zoos.<p>

Space was no longer the great unknown—it was now known indeed, with regular transports from one planetary system to another. The ningens had razed the Makai along with their torpid little planet, and youkai were hungry, hunted, isolated and outnumbered. The technological leaps to give humans super-demonic powers had been received by Kurama with dread.

Kurama still lived. Another two thousand years, albeit this time in the thin guise of a human boy, his body gaining demonic longevity long before technology granted it to humans as well, was not nothing, but understandable to a being already, at the time of his human birth, two thousand years old.

Well, my survival won't last for much longer, Kurama thought wryly, bitterly.

This was Karasu's third reincarnation. The first two times, he had been cut short by Kurama's own hand, the fight harder and more desperate each time. This time, however, Kurama feared he would not be so lucky. Falcon, as Karasu was known now, had done something he'd never done before—outsmarted and overpowered the ancient fox. It was with fear that Kurama looked up to his ancient enemy; fear, and no grace. Karasu watched him.

"All these years I've spent tracking you, Youko Kurama. All these years spent sniffing out your brethren in the Demonic Alliance and watching their blood flow in all its beautiful colors, just to find you. I must admit, it's rather breathtaking to have you here, before me. I'll have to take full advantage." He said the last sentence to himself, his lips, always the same, pulled up in a twist.

"Once upon a time, Karasu, you would have joined us." Kurama said it calmly, without any real emotion, and took the offered blow with grace. Karasu would have joined them, but he would still be where he was now: a brutal interrogator, leering at his defiant victim, the violence sweltering just below the surface. Kurama thought, not for the first time, that this must be fate. Karasu and he were destined to play this game into eternity.

He missed Koenma. The hostile leadership Spirit World had fallen under five hundred years ago only exacerbated the problems of an already ailing system. Koenma, perpetually a toddler, couldn't handle it. Koenma had died in his office, still clutching the red stamp. The last of the gods had left this universe long ago.

"Side with you? I wouldn't dream of it, darling. My place is here, above you." Karasu tilted his head and chuckled, stroking the point of his own chin, violet eyes demented as he examined his kitsune prey. "I'm going to give you your first gift, a chance to save yourself pain." Karasu's pink tongue drifted out to glide over his leering mouth, lustful and hungry. "Tell me the coding system for the demons' messages."

Kurama smiled arrogantly, his eyes shifting indifferently away from Karasu's face, finding the white contours of his glossy lips disturbing without the once-favored mask that even the previous Karasu had had an affinity for.

Karasu chuckled, a long-fingered hand drifting over the smooth, too-pale cheek of Kurama's delicate face, pulling it back when Kurama bit. "The answer I desired." Suddenly, Karasu's fist slammed into Kurama's jaw, knuckles ramming where they had previously caressed. Kurama reeled, his neck snapping and lips splitting with a splattering of blood. The chair toppled over, and Kurama skated miserably over the metal hull, skinning his thigh and arm, making him moan insensibly in pain.

"Process him," Karasu snarled to his waiting brutes. Then his voice was all honey. "I'll see you soon, Kurama."

Kurama's bonds were undone, solid arms ripping him from the chair and choking him none too gently, arms wrenched into a new restraint behind his back. The kitsune, blinking irately in the brig's mechanical light, was dragged away, the two guards giving him no time to put his feet down and walk. Green eyes muted with fear glanced over a thin shoulder, pink lips looking beautifully full as they bled from Karasu's blow. Watching brought a smile to Karasu's lips, and he giggled once, knowing what was in store for the defiant fox.

His beautiful hair would be cut, his clothes stripped and replaced by cold air and indelicate hands. His vitals would be taken, a crude medical exam preformed, just as it would be after every session. The brutes would complete the permanent warding of his yoki, a warding that would follow him onto death, as he shrieked in pain at the nanites stripping every bit of demonic power from his blood. Then the entre act's finale: he would be brought back with that bruised look of fear in his eyes, for the first round of interrogation.

It may take weeks to wring every drop of information from Kurama, days of blood, sex, and beautiful agony. Karasu conjured for himself the way Kurama's face had twisted from the insignificant little drops he'd felt so far. He smiled wider, pleased with Kurama's future in his hands. "It begins," he whispered, and walked through a second door, cackling to himself.


	2. Injection

They brought Kurama back along the narrow transsteel corridor blankly, as soulless and formless to Kurama as any of the robots that stalked planetary streets. Nude, he staggered along with Karasu's grunts to avoid being dragged, muscles cramped to the point of trembling, eyes glinting fearfully in the muted yellow light strips that followed the walls and ceiling.

Kurama wept remorsefully all during the march, from pain, from helplessness, from mortality and loss. His eyes, sweeping over his new accommodations, stayed wide and plaintive from the extent of pain that he had already endured, and from the crushing knowledge that they had only nudged the threshold of his tolerance. Nanites were painful, but they were hardly the most painful. Karasu would have methods far beyond that.

Kurama raised his head with a wince as the portal they'd reached snapped open, unable to staunch the tears flowing from his reddening eyes and down his striped cheeks. His knees gave out, but they dragged him the final distance anyway, his bare feet scraping the hull. He came to rest in front of Karasu, who looked up idly and smiled, taking him in with an intimate sweep of his eyes, up, down, savoring everything. Kurama blinked rapidly, wanting to end the tears, and licked stone dry lips, reaching inside to feel just how much power he didn't have.

"Karasu," he sneered, trying to muster some insolence that would speak through the terror.

Karasu chuckled. "Hold him," he commanded, and the brutes' grips tightened. Kurama grit his teeth and struggled wildly, kicking, biting, anything to get away. Karasu opened a drawer in a plastic dresser at the other end of the room, the angle wrong for Kurama to see inside it.

Kurama shrieked no when Karasu held up a glinting needle, examining it casually, and a bottle of an unknown liquid that shone iridescent green in Karasu's hands. Karasu readied the needle as he walked back, talking, Kurama far too panicked to register what he was saying, lunging back stupidly against his captors' holds, fear stripping Kurama of Kurama and leaving him nothing: no pride, no fortitude, just simple, basic fear.

When the words finally registered, Kurama froze.

"Hold still now," Karasu said smugly. "Improperly applied, this could kill you."

Kurama snarled in nameless defiance, listening to his heart beat in his chest. He didn't move. Karasu could be lying to ensure cooperation, but it was all too likely that he was not, and Kurama would not take chances with survival.

The ties around his wrist were unbound, his arm stretched out before him, shivering. Karasu smiled fondly at the bruises already, at this early date, etching dark nasty purple into Kurama's wrists. He pulled a rubber tie from his pocket, and tied it over Kurama's upper arm. A vein was chosen, and then Kurama looked away from the injection. As the needle withdrew, Kurama hunched into a fetal cringe and allowed himself to really shake again as he waited for the drug to take effect.

Then the pain began to spread from the place where the needle had pricked. The first burning twinges brought a moan, but within seconds the moan had escalated, and there were whooshing screams instead. Kurama arched, and began a curious dance.

His skin was on fire. Everything was hypersensitive; everything simply felt so strongly that he thought, within the first minute, he would go insane. He arched to his tiptoes to get away from the floor, the grips of the two men holding him like molten iron against his skin. Even the weight of air on his naked body was oppressive. He didn't know his own screams—didn't hear Karasu tell his minions to bring Kurama to the bedroom, and have the electricity hooked up when Karasu returned. Small blessings. Kurama knew nothing but pain as he was dragged away.


End file.
